The AI Cold War
Education should not have a price tag. Today, this claim can no longer be justified or validated. With the advent of artificial intelligence, education has lost its tradition and purpose. As companies focus on targeting schools to expand their user base and business growth in their “AI arms race,” schools are becoming territories of capitalism. Schools are no longer perceived as a place of learning; rather, students have become customers who will inevitably invest into their AI technology.
According to the New York Times, artificial intelligence companies are attempting to overhaul college education - by embedding its artificial intelligence tools in every facet of campus life,” seizing every opportunity to promulgate the newest technological innovation to students - the future leaders of our world - from offering free services during final exams to implementing marketing strategies that include personalized contents and 24/7 support. And the company that is spearheading the aggressive implementation of AI in higher education, unsurprisingly, is OpenAI. This month, California State University announced OpenAI as its partner. The company’s ChatGPT will become available for all 23 CSU campuses, serving over 450,000 students. Envisioning a future in which artificial intelligence becomes a predominant and ubiquitous learning tool that facilitates the work of staff and the study methods of students, competitors in the AI industry such as Elon Musk , Google and even the colleges themselves (such as Duke University), are making every effort to beat OpenAI to this goal and implement AI into higher education systems. It has, indeed, become an arms race of AI. College campuses have become a marketplace that encourages capitalizing and commodifying education.
This entire idea of the higher education field becoming a marketplace is beyond twisted. Colleges have long served as institutions of learning, playing a pivotal role in creating a democratic learning environment in which students are encouraged to become critical thinkers. The invasion of AI on college campuses is about to change the future of education, and it is not going to be a promising metamorphosis. The AI implementation in colleges (which comes with a big price tag) will not only deprive higher education of the core values of learning, but also continue encouraging companies to take advantage of students and educators for their financial gain. The future of higher education looks bleak as it has crossed the Rubicon, opening its doors to corporations that are ready to privatize and commodify education, reconstructing campus grounds as capitalist marketplace where students become consumers rather than scholars of critical thinking and responsible learning.
